Leopold's Way

by Edward D. Hoch

  He’d never met the second wife, though she was the one who’d signed the telegram informing him of his uncle’s death. Her name was Margaret, and Leopold knew only that she was a good deal younger than Joe. When the plane landed and he saw from the bus schedule that he would not reach Riger Falls before dinner he phoned her from a booth at the airport.

  “We’re so glad you could come,” her voice assured him. “Joe was always talking about you and what a success you’ve become in the east.”

  “He was like a father to me,” Leopold said. “Look, I’ll be there as soon as I can, but it’ll probably be after seven. I’ll take the next bus.”

  “Henry will meet you at the station. That’s my son.”

  “Fine.” He hung up and went out to wait for the next bus to Riger Falls.

  In the long evening sunshine his first view of the town was a reassuring one. The trees, the streets, the houses were all as he remembered them. Progress had not yet polluted the place where he grew up. Farther on, near the center of town, he came upon one concession to change—a sprawling shopping center with a supermarket and a drive-in movie. But even here the design of the place was muted, in keeping with its quiet surroundings. Riger Falls had always been a quiet town, if nothing else.

  A thin well-dressed man was waiting at the bus station and he introduced himself as Henry Cole. He was a few years younger than Leopold, perhaps still under 40, but he carried himself with a round-shouldered stoop that made him seem older. “I’m Margaret’s son by her first marriage,” he explained. “I live down the old Creek Road.”

  Leopold remembered the area—a dirt road lined with older houses that were little more than shacks. But that was a long time ago. Perhaps things were different now. “I haven’t been back in twenty years,” he told the man. “Haven’t seen Uncle Joe in all that time.”

  “He was a fine old guy,” Henry Cole said. “Too bad he had to die like that.”

  “How did he die?” Leopold asked. The telegram had given no details.

  “Hit by a car on Tuesday, right in front of his house. They didn’t think he was too bad at first, but at that age it was a terrible shock to his system. Died in the hospital yesterday morning.”

  “Who hit him?”

  “Don’t know. One of them wild kids from the next county, I suppose. That’s what the sheriff says, anyway.”

  “You mean it was a hit-and-run?”

  “That’s what they say. My mother was in the house when it happened. She says he just went across the street to mail a letter and then she heard this car racing down the street. And then a thump. She says the car never even slowed down.”

  “Was he conscious? Could he say anything?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask my mother.” He turned the car into a gravel driveway. “Here we are. Raznell’s Funeral Home.”

  Leopold looked out the car window at the familiar white Colonial structure. “Is Jerry Raznell still around?” Jerry had been his boyhood friend all through school, until Leopold moved away to New York.

  “It’s his place. The father died.”

  Inside, in a coffin surrounded by flowers, Uncle Joe Leopold lay at rest. Leopold said a brief silent prayer and then went over to the white-haired woman who stood with the other mourners. Though they’d never met, he recognized Margaret Leopold at once from the pictures Uncle Joe had sent him.

  “So glad you could come,” she said, extending her hand. “Joe would be so happy to know you’re back home.”

  “I’m only sorry it took this to bring me back.”

  “He often spoke of you, and how successful you are.” When she spoke, the lines of her mouth gave her a certain graceful air. Twenty years ago, about the time Uncle Joe married her, she would have been a beautiful woman. Even now, Leopold thought, she bore herself with a handsome dignity.

  “Had he been retired for long?” Leopold asked, remembering Uncle Joe’s fondness for the little woodworking shop on the highway.

  “Only about a year. And even then he could have kept going in. His health was near perfect and he still loved furniture.”

  “Your son told me about the accident. A terrible thing. Do the police have any idea who was driving the car?”

  “None. Maybe you should talk to the sheriff about it. He might like some help from a New York detective.”

  Leopold cleared his throat. “I started out in New York, but I’ve been up in Connecticut for a good many years now. Not nearly as large as New York. But maybe I will speak to him.” Some others drifted in to pay their respects, and for a time Leopold was caught up in a flow of memories, hearing the old names, seeing the half-remembered faces. It was not until after nine that he could get away. Margaret Leopold asked him to stay at the house but he declined, preferring the freedom of a motel room.

  “You can use my car overnight,” Henry Cole volunteered. “Here are the keys.”

  Leopold hesitated. “I don’t know—”

  “Go ahead. It’ll save me taking you to the motel and picking you up for the funeral.”

  Leopold accepted the keys with thanks. As he turned to leave, the familiar face of Jerry Raznell appeared in the doorway. “Leopold! Good to see you! I heard you’d flown out for the funeral.”

  “You haven’t changed, Jerry,” he said, and he meant it. Always a bit on the stocky side, Raznell’s added weight had helped maintain the jolly boyishness of his face. He was hardly anyone’s idea of the town undertaker.

  “Nor have you. A little gray at the temples, but you still look pretty fit. How’s the wife?”

  Had it been that long since they’d seen or talked to each other? “It was a short marriage. We got a divorce and she’s dead now.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” The grin disappeared, but only for an instant. “Say, I’m just closing up here. How about stopping for a drink? Get caught up on all these years. I’d invite you upstairs but one of the kids is sick.”

  “I have to check in at a motel.”

  “No problem. I’ll show you the way. It’s new since you lived here.”

  The motel was on the other side of town, part of a nationwide chain that had somehow discovered the rural pleasures of Riger Falls. Leopold checked in, deposited his small overnight bag on the bed, and joined Jerry Raznell in the dimly lit cocktail lounge for a drink.

  “It was a shock about your uncle, huh?”

  “It should have been more of a shock,” Leopold confessed. “In recent years I’d almost forgotten the old man’s existence. And once he was a father to me.”

  “We all grow up and get old. My own father died seven years ago and left me the business.”

  “You seem to be doing well. I noticed a new wing on the house.”

  “People never stop dying.”

  “I hear Uncle Joe got it from a hit-and-run driver.”

  “Yeah. Awful thing.”

  “Are the police investigating?”

  A shrug. “You know Sheriff Potter. No, on second thought, I guess you don’t. He’d have been after your time. Well, he’s a good enough man, but he has his own ideas. Wild kids from the next county, he says, and a lot of people believe him.”

  “I gather you don’t.”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “You think it was somebody here in Riger Falls?”

  Jerry Raznell looked down at his hands. “You’d better ask the sheriff about that.”

  “I came here to attend a funeral, Jerry, not to investigate a killing.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You didn’t,” Leopold told him. “Maybe you should say something.”

  “You’d better ask the sheriff,” he repeated.

  Leopold downed the rest of his Scotch. “I’ll do that. Thanks for the drink, Jerry.”

  Sheriff Potter was not in his office, but the night deputy furnished his home address. Leopold phoned first and identified himself. Shortly after ten o’clock, when he parked Henry Cole’s car in front of the sheriff’s neat
little ranch home, the man was waiting for him.

  “The wife’s having her bridge club,” he explained. “Come on out in the garage.”

  It was a double garage with one side given over to a workbench and power tools. Sheriff Potter left the overhead door open while they talked, and large moths began to circle above their heads, risking their powdery wings against the attractive glow of the ceiling light.

  With his curly black hair and dimpled chin, Potter did not look like a sheriff. He was too young for one thing, and when he spoke there was something like deference in his voice. “I’ve heard about you, Captain. Weren’t you written up in Law and Order recently?”

  “They ran an article on our department,” Leopold admitted, “about how we converted the old homicide squad into a violent crimes unit.”

  “I read everything I can find about police work. Not that I have much call to use it in Riger Falls.”

  “I was wondering about my uncle’s hit-and-run death. I understand it’s still unsolved.”

  Sheriff Potter ran his hand over the smooth wood of the work table. “Well, not exactly unsolved. For one thing, the car didn’t kill him right off, you know. He died a couple days later in the hospital. Case like that, in order to get an indictment we’d have to bring doctors before the grand jury to testify that the accident was the prime cause of death.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “Well, the man was seventy-eight years old. Doesn’t take much to kill somebody at that age, you know. A broken hip, a sudden shock—”

  “Do you know who was driving the car that hit him?”

  “We get a lot of kids from the next county along that road, especially on these warm summer nights. My road patrol does the best it can, but you know how it is sometimes.”

  Leopold sighed. “Look, Sheriff, I’ve been back in town only three hours and a good friend tells me to ask you about my uncle’s death. Well, I’m asking you.”

  Sheriff Potter scratched his head. “You gotta look at these things on balance sometimes. Your uncle was a good man, but he was seventy-eight years old. He’d lived a full life. Now if some young kids out joyriding hit him and caused his death, through no real fault of their own, should their lives be ruined by it?”

  “That’s an odd theory of law,” Leopold said. “Is that what happened?”

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Didn’t my uncle make a statement before he died?”

  “Nothing we could use. He never saw the car that hit him.”

  Leopold could sense he was getting nowhere with the man. If there was something strange and hidden about his uncle’s death, this was not the place to learn about it. “All right,” he said, starting for the door. “Nice meeting you.”

  The sheriff walked him out to the borrowed car. “How long you expect to be in town?”

  “I’ll be leaving after the funeral,” Leopold said. “Sometime tomorrow.”

  The following morning Leopold’s cousin Sara arrived in town for the funeral. She was a handsome woman in her mid-forties, a wealthy widow who had been involved in one of Leopold’s cases a few years earlier. “You’re looking good, Sara,” he said, greeting her with a cousinly kiss.

  “And so are you. It’s good to see you again.”

  They entered the funeral parlor and he nodded to Jerry Raznell, attired in a black coat and gray striped pants, looking a bit more like a smiling best man at a marriage ceremony than a funeral director. Margaret Leopold was already seated, but she rose to greet Sara and a few other arrivals. Her son, Henry Cole, was not yet present.

  “I’ll want you to ride with me in the first car,” Margaret said to Leopold. “You were very close to Joe.”

  He nodded and sat down next to her. Jerry Raznell came in after a few moments and said a brief prayer. Then he began reading off the list of cars and occupants. Henry Cole was behind the wheel of the first car when they reached it. He nodded to Leopold, came out, and held the door open for his mother. As Leopold climbed in he saw a blue and white sheriff’s car at the end of the line. He wondered if Potter was inside it.

  The service at the graveside was brief and nonsectarian. Leopold found himself standing next to cousin Sara and when it was over she said, “Will you buy me lunch? I’d feel uneasy going back to the house.”

  “Of course. There used to be a nice restaurant out by the falls.” He drove back with Cole and Margaret to the house, then borrowed Cole’s car again with the promise to return it shortly. Sara was waiting for him back at the funeral parlor.

  “I’d forgotten how weird this town was,” she said as she settled into the seat next to him.

  “It never seemed weird to me.”

  “Well, that’s because you lived here. I was only a summer visitor. One of the outsiders.”

  He drove her to the Fall View Inn, a rambling old place that had been the town’s best restaurant in his youth. The prices were high, but a certain seediness had begun to set in. The antique furniture that greeted them at the entrance was covered with dust just a little too thick for mere atmosphere. The falls were still there, of course, dropping the slim trickle of water that gave the town its name.

  “It was a nice service,” she said. “Short and simple.”

  “Did you hear anything about how he died?”

  “A car accident, someone said.”

  “Hit-and-run. He was crossing the street outside his house.”

  “How terrible! Even a small town like this isn’t safe from it.”

  “I think there was something odd about his death, Sara.”

  “In what way?”

  “I think the sheriff knows who was driving that car. But for some reason he’s not doing anything about it.”

  She smiled at his words. “Perhaps you’re just too much of a detective.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You see things where there’s nothing to be seen.”

  He ate his lunch in glum silence after that, wondering if she could be right.

  The others had gathered back at the Leopold home, in the post-funeral tradition, and Leopold and Sara joined them shortly after lunch. Sheriff Potter was there, all boyish charm, chatting with an older woman on the front porch as he sipped beer from a glass.

  “Good to see you again, Leopold. Thought you might have started back before I could say goodbye.”

  “No, I’m still here.”

  The older woman took Sara in tow and they disappeared into the house. Leopold and Sheriff Potter were left alone on the porch. “I think Margaret’s taking it quite good,” the sheriff remarked. “At least she has her son to take care of her.”

  “Tell me about Henry Cole. He said he lives out on Creek Road.”

  “That’s right. Got a nice place out there. Henry’s a druggist in town. Owns his own store and works hard at it every day.”

  “I’ve been driving his car around.” He glanced out at the car and for the first time he noticed a dent in the front bumper where the sunlight was hitting it. He made a mental note to examine it more closely later.

  “It’s been sort of the family vehicle since your uncle lost his license. Margaret never did drive.”

  “How did he lose his license?”

  “It happened last year. He went off the road at a curve and hit a fruit stand. No one was hurt and it was sort of funny, really. But he’d had some other minor accidents before that and his age was against him. The state revoked his license. So since then Henry’s been driving them around.”

  But Leopold was only half listening to the words. He was staring across the street. Suddenly he said, “Sheriff, tell me what you see over there.”

  “See? What do you mean? Can’t you see for yourself?”

  “I want to know what you see.”

  “A house. A couple of vacant lots.”

  “What else? Tell me everything.”

  “Two lamp posts. A fire hydrant. A Rotary Club sign.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else.
What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Leopold said. He left the porch and went down the front walk to the street. Finally he came back onto the porch. “You mentioned the kids in the next county. What made you suspect them?”

  Sheriff Potter shifted uneasily. “Are you back on that again?”

  “If I can’t get the answer from you, I’ll get it from the sheriff over there.”

  “All right,” he said with a sigh. “There was a hit-and-run death over in Sedgeville the same day Joe Leopold got it. Probably just coincidence, but I guess I figured the same wild driver did them both.”

  “Who was killed in Sedgeville?”

  “A kid. I don’t know any more about it.”

  Sara reappeared on the porch with Margaret Leopold. “Margaret’s going to show me the garden. Want to come?”

  “Sure,” he agreed, glancing at the sheriff.

  “You people go ahead,” Potter said. “I have to get back to the office anyway. These summer weekends really bring out the drivers.”

  Leopold sensed that Potter was anxious to escape his questions. He followed the two women into the back yard, watching while the white-haired Margaret pulled a carrot from the earth and offered it for his inspection. “This garden was always Joe’s pride,” she said, a sadness in her voice. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep it up without him.”

  Leopold looked down the rows of flowers, past the leafy vegetables and the cornstalks that reached to his head. He remembered the garden from the days of his youth. It had always been here, always the same yet always changing. Reborn each spring.

  “I must be going,” Sara told the white-haired woman. “I only drove down for the funeral.”

  Margaret cut a few flowers and handed them to her. “I’m a widow now, like you. I hope I can be as brave as you’ve been.”

  Sara took the flowers and looked away. “I must be going,” she said again.

  Leopold fell into step beside her. “I’ll walk you to the car.”

  “I was never any good at funerals,” she said when they were out of Margaret’s hearing. “That’s why I wouldn’t come back for lunch. I never know the right thing to say.”

  “Do any of us?” Leopold asked. “I spend my life on the other side. I’m usually concerned with who did it, but not who it happened to.”